Marin City civic hub venture lands $3.85M grant

The Center for Community Life in Marin City, as depicted in a design rendering, would include health services, a seniors center and recreation space. (Courtesy of Marin City Community Service District)

A $24 million plan to improve critical senior, health and recreation buildings in Marin City has received a huge boost from the Marin Community Foundation, which is providing a $3.85 million grant for the project.

The envisioned “Center for Community Life” was initially conceived as a $5 million upgrade of the existing Manzanita Center multipurpose facility. But the project grew more ambitious as community leaders worked up plans to significantly alter the campus, which is relied on by the community’s roughly 3,000 residents for a variety of services.

Now six buildings are being looked at for construction or upgrades, including the community’s senior center, gymnasium, a recreation center, the Harriet Tubman building, an early childhood center and a health center. There has also been a push for a community pool, but it remains outside the scope of the first phase, for now.

The overall plan caught the eye of the foundation.

“This is a major grant and major investment in the future of the vitality of Marin City,” said Thomas Peters, foundation president. “It builds on a lot of community energy and enthusiasm.”

Peters noted the 2015 reopening of George “Rocky” Graham Park and the expansion of services at the Health and Wellness Center. The community also recently opened a new boxing and fitness center and created a teen center. A new Target store opened earlier this year.

“This is a time of enthusiastic investment in a tremendously creative community,” Peters said. “The new community center really expresses and embodies opportunity for people, from youth all the way to the community elders, with the idea of having better places for their futures.”

The Marin Community Foundation, one of the largest foundations in the nation with $1.6 billion in assets, administers more than 500 individual and family philanthropic funds. The largest is the Buck Trust, valued at approximately $800 million, and all grants from it are made solely in Marin.

The foundation distributes about $32 million from the Buck Trust each year, and roughly $35 million from the other family funds, half of which is granted to Marin nonprofits and half to organizations nationally and internationally.

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“This is big news,” said Josh Barrow, project manager, who announced the $3.85 million award at the Marin City Community Services District meeting Wednesday. “With this, we have crossed the $7 million fundraising mark, which puts us about one-third of the way there.”

While a major boost, the foundation grant now puts a hard focus on raising the rest of the money as a goal of getting the buildings open by 2020 looms.

“I’d like to see funds being expended for fundraising to really make this happen,” said Everett Brandon, community services district board member.

Peters hopes the foundation’s grant will help shake loose funds from other foundations and philanthropists.

“It’s to help leverage and to call on others to join the effort,” he said.

One method of funding that has been mentioned — new market tax credits — had drawn criticism from some in the community, who fear the financial instrument could allow control of the new buildings to fall into private hands.

“With anything, if you don’t set it up right, anything can go sideways.” Barrow said. “If it’s set up right, there is no concern. It’s been used hundreds and hundreds of times and no one has lost their land over it.”

But community services board member Royce McLemore said she is wary of the tax credits and noted the foundation’s grant doesn’t require they be used to fill out funding.

“They did not mention new market tax credits as a condition at all,” she said.